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The mpmath setup files can be downloaded from the mpmath download page or the Python Package Index. Download the source package (available as both .zip and .tar.gz), extract it, open the extracted directory, and run

pythonsetup.pyinstall

If you are using Windows, you can download the binary installer

mpmath-(version).win32.exe

from the mpmath website or the Python Package Index. Run the installer and follow the instructions.

By default, mpmath uses Python integers internally. If gmpy version 1.03 or later is installed on your system, mpmath will automatically detect it and transparently use gmpy integers intead. This makes mpmath much faster, especially at high precision (approximately above 100 digits).

To verify that mpmath uses gmpy, check the internal variable BACKEND is not equal to ‘python’:

>>> importmpmath.libmp>>> mpmath.libmp.BACKEND'gmpy'

The gmpy mode can be disabled by setting the MPMATH_NOGMPY environment variable. Note that the mode cannot be switched during runtime; mpmath must be re-imported for this change to take effect.

It is recommended that you run mpmath’s full set of unit tests to make sure everything works. The tests are located in the tests subdirectory of the main mpmath directory. They can be run in the interactive interpreter using the runtests() function:

importmpmathmpmath.runtests()

Alternatively, they can be run from the tests directory via

pythonruntests.py

The tests should finish in about a minute. If you have psyco installed, the tests can also be run with

pythonruntests.py-psyco

which will cut the running time in half.

If any test fails, please send a detailed bug report to the mpmath issue tracker. The tests can also be run with py.test. This will sometimes generate more useful information in case of a failure.

If you downloaded the source package, the text source for these documentation pages is included in the doc directory. The documentation can be compiled to pretty HTML using Sphinx. Go to the doc directory and run

pythonbuild.py

You can also test that all the interactive examples in the documentation work by running

pythonrun_doctest.py

and by running the individual .py files in the mpmath source.

(The doctests may take several minutes.)

Finally, some additional demo scripts are available in the demo directory included in the source package.

Mpmath is available as a subpackage of SymPy. With SymPy installed, you can just do

importsympy.mpmathasmpmath

instead of importmpmath. Note that the SymPy version of mpmath might not be the most recent. You can make a separate mpmath installation even if SymPy is installed; the two mpmath packages will not interfere with each other.

The mpmath installation under Sage automatically use Sage integers for asymptotically fast arithmetic,
so there is no need to install GMPY:

sage: mpmath.libmp.BACKEND
'sage'

In Sage, mpmath can alternatively be imported via the interface library
sage.libs.mpmath.all. For example:

sage: import sage.libs.mpmath.all as mpmath

This module provides a few extra conversion functions, including call()
which permits calling any mpmath function with Sage numbers as input, and getting
Sage RealNumber or ComplexNumber instances
with the appropriate precision back: